What Was I Saying...?

Hello, Dreamwidth, and yes, it has been a long time, sorry. This year has really put the “fun” in “executive disfunction.” But I need somewhere to ramble, so here we are.

Today was a rough day. I’m at MFF, which I was abjectly unprepared for in the first place, but that was true last year and the year before too, so I was hopeful I could pull it out. Yesterday was fairly decent; only one commission, but it was a big one. The commissioner negotiated herself up to double what I was asking (um, thank you?) and in the end felt like she’d very much gotten her money’s worth, so big win/win there. That’s the kind of commission I like!

Today, I sold a moderate number of books, but got no commissions whatsoever. Selling books is fine, I’m always happy to do it, but half of that money goes straight to FurPlanet, as opposed to commissions, which are all me, and even if sales had been amazing (which they weren’t), it would be very difficult for a books-only day to break even, much less make money. So, that was scuffed.

My quest for breakfast kept being thwarted by every place being closed when I wanted to go there; I ended up walking to the Hilton Starbucks (which is not that far, but was out in the freezing Chicago wind), and then when I finished there and went to the Dealer Room I discovered that smoothbrain I am, I left my badge in the hotel room, requiring another hike back… so that was scuffed.

My neighboring table dropped some of their product on me from a high shelf; fortunately, it was a plush tail and mostly resulted in some of my books being knocked over. That was only very minor scuff, but it still counts.

Mid-afternoon, due to the lack of traction at my table (again, nobody to blame but myself), I started falling asleep at my table—which is not a good look. So I went off to get more coffee, which requires leaving my table unattended except for any eyes the FurPlanet guys next to me can spare to watch it. After yesterday’s snafu with the Convention Center Starbucks, I didn’t even mess with it. First I went across to the Crowne Plaza coffee shop/lunch bar… only to discover it was closed between something like 2:00 and 4:00. So, that was scuffed.

Back to the Hilton Starbucks I go; it was probably faster than the Convention Starbucks would have been, and definitely both more pleasant and better at accurately making drinks. It also got me a walk out in the brisk air, which helped me wake up. However, while there, I was informed by my smarter half that our car engine was more severely damaged than we thought by the recent coolant hose explosion and that, basically, we need to get a rebuilt engine or a whole new car.

Super-mega-scuffed. -.-

Anyway, after the Dealer Room closed, I wandered over to the con hotel, where I picked up a rather flabby flatbread and tried to find someplace to sit and people-watch, without much success. I didn’t find anyone I knew, even on the con staff, nor did I find any people who seemed particularly interesting to hang with. Even in the very eclectic furry fandom, finding people with my own tastes and sensibilities can be difficult, and the culture of furry has evolved over time such that for all its diversity, there’s a remarkable sameness to the people hanging in the hotel common areas on Friday night. If you’re not a late teen/early twenties person away from home for the first time and able to cut loose… there’s not a lot for you there.

Scuffed? Eh, I dunno, it’s just life being life. But it also left me with nobody to hang with, no real desire to lurk in the lobby, and with no panels I’m interested in attending. I am now sitting in the “Business Center” section of the hotel so I can have a flat surface to type on, and so that I’m not just paying (mumble)-hundred dollars just to sit alone in a hotel room.

NGL, it’s been a rough con. But I want to get it out of my system here tonight, so I can face tomorrow fresh and hopefully have a good final convention day.

-The Gneech

(The video has nothing to do with this post, I just love dance AMVs.)

So February will be the 25th anniversary of Suburban Jungle, which is... well it's a whole thing. XD But I want to celebrate it! Some of this I'm doing by committing to actually getting my #$&% together about having a proper display at convention tables again before Anthrocon, as well as an anniversary celebration comic that I have two months to crank out, yikes. XD

When I was discussing the matter with Inkblitz, he said, "Do a room party! Room party room party! Hype up the anniversary!" To which, I would love to have one, but host one? No. XD I have not got the spoons to do that while also doing the table and also cranking out comics.

Once upon a time, Kerry loved doing Suburban Jungle room parties at Further Confusion—it was her local con, so it was easy for her to bring drinks and snacks, get a room on a party floor that she had no intention of sleeping in, etc. All I had to do was make a poster, and actually show up to the party, and Mammallamadevil did the rest.

So, that said, anyone going to AC who'd like to host a 25th Anniversary Room Party? :D Talk to me!

-TG

Alas, sales were sluggish again today. While the raw income was higher than yesterday, it was mostly on books, so I’ll end up keeping a bit over half of what I actually brought in. I did have some fun conversations, and got some very nice compliments on my art, but I actually spent most of the day being completely unable to get anyone to look me in the eye. XD

The con is bloody big. It feels like what Dragon*Con felt like back in 2000, except that Dragon*Con had more diversity of content. It feels like the furry fandom has become very self-referential, with a handful of archetypes or themes being repeated over and over again—kawaii cuteness, edgy inversions of kawaii cuteness, proclamation of marginalized identity, or porn. And while any and all of these themes can have value, it’s kind of monotonous for them to be the sum total. Maybe we’re just in a cultural slump (those do come around from time to time), but I can’t think of a single thing that’s jumped out to me as new and distinctive in the fandom recently. The “floor” of craftsmanship has risen quite high—the base level of fursuit now is where the “amazing” ones were when I came into the fandom, for example, but they all kinda look the same.

People keep telling me that they like my art because “it looks like old-school furry,” which, I mean, I guess it would! But… what does “new-school furry” look like? Is it the painterly look of someone like Kenket? Is it 3D VR avatars? I dunno. Does my art look that different from somebody like Kadath?

I don’t know. Be more interesting, furry! XD For all the numerical inflation, you seem to have fallen into a rut. XD

-TG

PS: I did warn you they were random thoughts. XD

Technically day one of the con, but day two of me being here, taking a little break from scripting (SECRET PROJECT) to do a quickie post. Food prices are off the chain, even by the standards of “You’re trapped at a con, suckers!” I’ll have to do a serious breakdown of my expenses vs. profits when the con is done to see if I at least break even.

Yesterday was, in a word, stressful. I spent a lot of time feeling isolated and lonely despite being in one of the largest furry cons in the world, and this was rounded off by drama in the dealer room, which I will post about after the con is done, but don’t want to discuss publicly in the meantime because I don’t want to cause even more drama.

For the record, and as I imagine most people reading this know, I am neither a fan of, nor ever a deliberate instigator of drama. I don’t react well to it and generally feel like life’s too short for such malarkey. So coming on the heels of a couple of Mega-Karens at the dayjob earlier in the week, the stuff in the dealer room was just like “Yeah, no.”

But! I got a good night’s sleep, and today’s a new day, so I’m gonna to straighten my spine, take a deep breath, and move on.

Here’s to making it a good day. :)

-TG

As a sort of combo birthday present and attempt to bring myself into a more recent decade of art tools, I've picked up an iPad Pro and Procreate. Since MFF is a ridiculously-scary week-ish away, I've been frantically trying to get up to speed with it in time for the show. NGL, it's giving me trouble. :P Pinching with finger and thumb doesn't do anything, while pinching with one finger from each had goes into a free rotate/resize mode, I'm suddenly erasing or drawing on the wrong layer because the edge of my pinkie lightly brushed a tool, and so on.

So, it's taking me even longer to get art done than on the PC, and there's a lot of frustration involved with the process. This pic, for instance, which I wanted to have finished today, but got stopped by going down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out why my pictures of Nii-Chan weren't showing up in my iCloud photos so I could sample the colors off of them. :P So, hey, have a WIP instead. ^.^' Will I finish the pic tomorrow? Dunno. Hope so. XD

Fun Fact: Before Nii-Chan became basically "Me, But Girl" I had originally conceived of her existing in the Suburban Jungle universe, a kind of "self insert fan fic" entry into my own work. XD I had in mind that she was a college freshman and a big fan of Leona, looking to build her own show biz career, stories of meeting her gf, and so on. I never wrote any of those down and I don't know if I ever will, but that's the genesis of this pic. Nii-Chan loves to dance, and so do I, although I rarely indulge for fear of knocking over furniture, bystanders, or the occasional wall. I am not a graceful person. ¬.¬

Who knew it was so hard to find a static pose that reads as "dancing"? XD She's actually supposed to be in mid-spin here, knees bent quite a bit, but the net result is that her legs look short. XD Oh well. This is a practice piece, the important thing is learning the tool, rather than satisfaction with the work qua itself. And besides, she's still kinda cute. :)

-The Gneech

Not the R63 version of Rarity, although I'd be happy with that, too.

So, the past several weeks have been bonkers. Got a new job (Barnes & Noble), moved back to Virginia from Maryland, spent four days in Chicago for Midwest Furfest, and then had an unexpected (but welcome) visitor come spend the night at our place over the weekend. I haven't looked at my hours, but I do know that of the 12 days I've had off since mid-November, six of them were either moving, convention, or Thanksgiving. So I've been pretty harried.

The good side of that, is I've been insulated from all the noise and drama around world events and social media. The bad side of that, is I've been isolated from all my online friends and barely able to work on my writing and art.

Fortunately, now that the moving is done and we begin the long process of unpacking and assembling the house, that particular problem is much reduced. The last single large bit (car paperwork) will probably be dealt with tomorrow, and from then it'll be slow but incremental improvement until the new house is truly a home. It's already got a Christmas tree, the first one we've had in two years, and that is a bigger deal than it sounds.

I'm not to the point where I can get some work done in the morning and then go off to my job in the afternoon/evening yet, but I expect that will start being a thing later this week or early next. Of course, once the holidays come barreling through, the B&N job will either scale back or possibly disappear entirely. But I've got some big things in the works for 2018 that will make everything happening for me job-wise right now seem like the smallest potatoes, and that's going to be pretty awesome. I'll have more updates on that as I get them worked out, or probably by my annual New Year's post.

In the meantime, hey! I'm still here! I'm still creating stuff! And this time I'm not even dodging 16 ton weights! More like spinning 16 hundred plates.

It's an upgrade, man. It's an upgrade.

-The Gneech

...because that's pretty much what a hangover actually is. :P

I bring this up because despite my many and various attempts at getting fluids into my system over the past four days, last night I finally reached the Dehydration Headache stage, and have been camped there. Owie. I hoped that Drinking All the Water and getting some sleep would fix it, but no such luck. So this morning I broke down and bought the last packet of Advil from the hotel shop, on top of getting All the Rest of the Water with my breakfast. Here's hoping.

Yesterday was a good con day. :) Arrived early for the Artist Alley check-in, so sat and chatted a bit with Brian Reynolds, then caught a few extra Z's until the room opened. The Alley's population was rather depleted, a symptom of Sunday I suppose, but the spot next to me was open all day, so I took advantage of this to spread out enough to have my pens up on the table.

[As I type this: a couple of self-satisfied non-convention business bros going on about all the "animal weirdos walking around last night" at the other end of the Starbucks bench, whipping each other into a frenzy and talking smack like the furries were trying to pick a fight just by existing. -.- Geeze Louise, shut your dumb faces and go away.]

Anyway! I sold a handful of books and a couple of sketches, but the room closed early for Sunday. Seifer and I headed over to closing ceremonies, which was the usual verklempt-a-thon. MFF raised over $85,000 for their charity this year, something like $12,000 of it right there in the closing ceremonies as Alkali passed his big ol' hat around the room. They also announced that Rama Lion was taking over as the con chair next year, and that Kyell Gold was going to be one of next year's GOH's, so that's cool. :)

The rest of the night was basically Seif, Inkblitz and I wandering from food to Dead Dog Dance to people-watching spot, chatting about fandom history, fursuiting trends, and whatever else came to mind, with a guest appearance by Zia, who added Mage: The Ascension to the mix. (Apparently Zia's a fan of the Physiognomizer from Technomancer's Toybox, which pleased me. I was always proud of that one.)

[Update: Business bros are still flapping their gums, but they moved out of my immediate earshot at least. Oy.]

Flight home is sometime around noon, so once I finish my breakfast it's pretty much pack and go. I've got notes and ideas on what to do for AnthroCon to improve sales and make the table go smoother, and I'm looking forward to it. But in the meantime I'm looking forward to getting home to laurie_robey, the kitties, and my own bed. XD

-The Gneech

The deprivations of Thursday night paid off in getting an Artist Alley space yesterday; I plunked down next to Brian Reynolds, picked up my books from FurPlanet, and set up. I immediately had one person ask if they could take a picture of my table setup ("Uh, sure?") and another tell me how much he respected the work anyone put into making comics, no matter how simple the art style. ("Uh, thanks?")

Unfortunately, a miscommunication between me and FurPlanet ended up with only five copies of each book. As a result, issues five and six, the items new to this con, sold out quickly on the first day, kind of a mixed blessing. XD It was great to be able to say something sold out– but as those two items were what I expected to be the big money-makers for this con, I might be screwed as far as sales go.

Commissions were dry. I had one come in late, so I gave it my all. There's some kind of weird energy going on about my art, because once again I had lots of people tell me how cool and appealing it was... but then walk away sketchless. But I also made sure that everyone I could get to take one had a card for the Suburban Jungle site and hopefully will pick up some new readers if nothing else.

Wound down the evening by having dinner with Blitzy, Trixie, and Seif, then checking out the art show, which seemed to be missing about 1/3 of its intended content. I heard rumors of problems with setup, or something, and that there was quite a kerfluffle about the whole thing, but I don't know any details.

Sleep without the CPAP is, as predicted, a challenge. :P By strategically propping myself onto my side or stomach with pillows making it difficult for me to roll over, I did manage to catch a few hours of uninterrupted sleep between spurts of waking up without air. I remember having an interesting dream that featured Hugh Grant playing Bertie Wooster in a strangely-smooth interpretation of the character, and that my review of said performance was that while Four Weddings and a Funeral was probably the most legitimate modern descendant of Jeeves & Wooster, Hugh Grant just did not make a good Bertie.

Anyway! Today will be a shorter stint in the Alley, leaving early to help inkblitz with his roleplaying panel; dinner plans for tonight are going out with Vince, Dev, and various members of the FurPlanet crew, so that should be cool.

It's been a wonky MFF! But I'm glad to be here and to see my friends. :)

-The Gneech

So, last week was a challenge. >.> Messed up sleep, a cat-in-crisis (Lady) dropped in our lap, job hunt frustration, and a general lack of fucks to give led to me basically chucking everything out the window (everything I could chuck, anyhow) and playing video games. (Other than Overwatch, because that particular game is often the opposite of relaxing.)

However, I only let myself do that with the promise that I would be back to work on Monday and get things done that need to be done. So step one is: organize! Thus, the Too Much To Do List for the next two weeks:

1. Do some kind of workout.


2. Take a shower and get dressed.


3. Issue six page nine


4. Job applications


5. Blacktigr commission


6. Overwatch competitive stream/Mastering Mercy vid


7. Mooncat Timey-Wimey badge


8. LKCMSL Timey-Wimey badge


9. Graveyard Greg IBMBA commish (NOTE: send bill for this)


10. PTBAF panel agenda


11. Print for AC: button restocks, Best Bodies Contest flyer, Timey-Wimey badges


12. BtA YouTube banner


13. BtA Patreon banner


14. Read books for Rainbow Awards

Right ho. Time to get started.

-The Gneech